Winnebago County proposes solution to curb vacation scofflaws

Wednesday

Jul 16, 2014 at 9:26 PMJul 16, 2014 at 11:37 PM

By Susan VelaRockford Register Star

ROCKFORD — Winnebago County has drafted a proposal to address its vacation scofflaws: The 105 employees who have saved up vacation hours beyond two years would have to deplete the banked time off within five years.

Also, the policy commits that going forward, each of the county’s 1,600 full- and part-time employees uses vacation within the required two years or lose it.

“Our preference is going to be use it,” County Board Chairman Scott Christiansen said.

Employees storing up vacation time beyond the two-year requirement have racked up an unpaid bill of $805,255, according to data provided to the Register Star under a Freedom of Information request.

The public defender’s office is largely to blame, with 13 vacation bankers due the equivalent of $278,460 in earned income. The top eight violators are due about $400,000.

Christiansen forwarded the proposed solution to the Operations and Administrative Committee, and members discussed it Wednesday.

“We want (them) to take it because we think they come back refreshed and it’s good for them to take it,” Sheriff Dick Meyers said.

PDF: Following the money

Banking vacation time — perhaps to cushion retirement years or save for a longer vacation — uses more taxpayer dollars than using the allotted time off each year.

That’s partly because employees receive vacation pay at their most current pay rate instead of the pay rate in the year in which they earned the vacation.

County officials have acknowledged that the vacation problem exists because administrators allowed it to happen. The policy says: “In no case shall more than one year’s accumulated vacation be carried over.”

“Moving forward, I want to have a policy where there’s no carryover,” committee Chairman Gary Jury said at the conclusion of the session. “You get five weeks of vacation, you use it. There’s a lot of legality to that.”

He hopes to settle the matter soon. Jury discovered the abuse while reviewing county policies.

No matter how many years have elapsed since the vacation time was earned, employees earned the income and, by law, must be paid for the hours.

Public Defender Karen Sorensen admits to saving up the most vacation time — a figure that exceeds $100,000. She has blamed the abundant banked time on a low salary when she started working for the county decades ago, running a stressed department that needed her constant attention and some surgeries that she would not detail.

Christiansen pointed out that the county has dropped about 200 employees from the payroll since 2008.